Interfaith Encounters in America

Kate McCarthy

Publication Year: 2007

From its most cosmopolitan urban centers to the rural Midwest, the United States is experiencing a rising tide of religious interest. While terrorist attacks keep Americans fixed on an abhorrent vision of militant Islam, popular films such as The Passion of the Christ and The Da Vinci Code make blockbuster material of the origins of Christianity. The 2004 presidential election, we are told, was decided on the basis of religiously driven moral values. A majority of Americans are reported to believe that religious differences are the biggest obstacle to world peace.Beneath the superficial banter of the media and popular culture, however, are quieter conversations about what it means to be religious in America today-conversations among recent immigrants about how to adapt their practices to life in new land, conversations among young people who are finding new meaning in religions rejected by their parents, conversations among the religiously unaffiliated about eclectic new spiritualities encountered in magazines, book groups, or online. Interfaith Encounters in America takes a compelling look at these seldom acknowledged exchanges, showing how, despite their incompatibilities, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and Hindu Americans, among others, are using their beliefs to commit to the values of a pluralistic society rather than to widen existing divisions.Chapters survey the intellectual exchanges among scholars of philosophy, religion, and theology about how to make sense of conflicting claims, as well as the relevance and applicability of these ideas "on the ground" where real people with different religious identities intentionally unite for shared purposes that range from national public policy initiatives to small town community interfaith groups, from couples negotiating interfaith marriages to those exploring religious issues with strangers in online interfaith discussion groups.Written in engaging and accessible prose, this book provides an important reassessment of the problems, values, and goals of contemporary religion in the United States. It is essential reading for scholars of religion, sociology, and American studies, as well as anyone who is concerned with the purported impossibility of religious pluralism.

Contents

Acknowledgments

... For research assistance I am grateful to Arin Cole and especially Rebecca
Anker, who also transcribed and coded interviews and helped me
through the editorial process. Stephanie Hamel gave me valuable insight
into using grounded theory to get the most from interview data. ...

Introduction

The volume of American conversations about religion has perhaps never
been higher. Both the frequency and the stridency of references to religion
in national discourse—from talk radio to popular films to media
analyses—have been turned up high. Terrorist attacks keep us fixed on an
abhorrent version of militant Islam. The Passion of the Christ and The Da
Vinci Code make blockbuster material (and controversy) of the origins of ...

“The map is not the territory,” we learned a long time ago from general
semantics. This has certainly become clear to many of us on long hikes
when the topographical map and the trail in front of us seem to bear little
relation to one another. But we carry our maps just the same. My goal
in exploring interfaith encounters in the United States today is to get at
the territory itself, the experience of Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus,
Pagans, Buddhists, Sikhs, and others ...

In the presidential election of 2004, Americans suddenly discovered
color as a defining mark of their political identities—not black and white
this time, but red and blue. From its use in network news graphics to represent
Republican and Democratic voting patterns, “red state” and “blue
state” quickly came to serve as shorthand for broad cultural divisions on
everything from gay marriage and prayer in schools to fashion and music
tastes.1 The instant ubiquity of red state/blue ...

Chapter 3: When the Other Is Neighbor Community-Based Interfaith Work

A “community” is a slippery thing to define. On the one hand, it has
come to refer to any group of people with a common interest or identity—
we hear of the “Asian American community,” the “pro-life community,”
the “transgender community,” even, in a trade publication I spotted recently,
the “event-planning community.” On the other hand, geographically
defined communities—the towns and neighborhoods where we
live—are often anonymous places where we know only a few people, ...

Most interfaith work is a purposeful, intentional thing. Driven by intellectual
passion, politics, or a commitment to community harmony, people
of different religious identities find or create the structures that will
allow them to explore their difference and find common purpose. But for
interfaith couples, the work of...

Chapter 5: Meeting the Other in Cyberspace Interfaith Dialogue Online

The statistics are becoming familiar: 137 million American adults—more
than two-thirds—are now online (Pew Internet 2005). Nine out of ten
American school children have access to computers. More than four out
of five households with computers also have Internet access. And clearly,
one of the things people are doing with all that connectivity is learning ...

Conclusion

This tour of several sites of interfaith encounter affirms that the pluralist
impulse is alive and well in the United States, despite the twin threats
of fundamentalism and the homogenizing commodification of culture.
For every gesture of religious intolerance that so captures media attention,
we can find countless instances of individuals and groups stepping
across religious lines with curiosity and open hearts. ...

Welcome to Project MUSE

Use the simple Search box at the top of the page or the Advanced Search linked from the top of the page to find book and journal content. Refine results with the filtering options on the left side of the Advanced Search page or on your search results page. Click the Browse box to see a selection of books and journals by: Research Area, Titles A-Z, Publisher, Books only, or Journals only.